In April and in August, I blogged about my experiences with the Boston Marathon and the Vineman Marathon. On Sunday, I had the opportunity to run in the inaugural Santa Barbara International Marathon from Goleta to Santa Barbara, California. Generally, there is a perennial gravitation amongst members of my race club to register for the California International Marathon in the Sacramento area, but after a cold and dreary experience with that race last year, I didn't feel like returning to that particular one. A friend and training partner posted the link to SBIM on my Facebook wall, and within a couple of days we had a group of more than twenty people signed up to make the road trip to Santa Barbara.  Our gamble paid off, as there was a significant temperature and wind chill difference between the two locations on race day.

There once was a Santa Barbara Marathon during the 1970's and 80's but, during the past couple of years, a board member of the Santa Barbara Athletic Association named Rusty Snow worked to create a new race. The course was certainly scenic, with very mild rolling hills during the first 16 miles and a couple of significant ones later on (including a fairly challenging grade during Mile #24). It was smoothly organized, except for a half hour delay to the start time which was blamed on a traffic accident, but skeptics who saw the long bathroom lines thought that was a convenient excuse. Either way, all was forgotten by 7:00am.

Had you asked me four weeks ago about my expectations for this race, I would have predicted a personal record. After a lackluster training season interrupted by a career change accompanied by long commute hours, I surprised myself by posting a 2:12:59 20-mile time at the Clarksburg Country Run. Based on that time, I felt like I was in shape to easily break three hours in Santa Barbara. However, during the week leading up to the race, I developed a nagging upper hamstring and IT band injury on my right leg and both legs felt relatively dead during the weekend. I didn't know if it was due to racing too hard at Clarksburg or mismanaging my taper, but my sub-3 intention seemed a bit more far-fetched by Sunday morning.

Still, I decided to run a very disciplined 6:52/mile pace for as long as I could before deciding how I felt in the latter, hillier miles. That plan went well for most of the race, and this was one marathon where I could honestly say I picked the right pace and didn't make any mental mistakes. Still, the pounding of the downhill sections during the last eight miles took its toll on my legs and I had a lot of cramping issues by Mile #23. It wasn't too difficult for me to hold a 7:00/mile pace, but anything faster would cause a calf, hamstring or quad to immediately cramp. Though I could see my friend and training partner a minute or two ahead of me throughout the race, there was nothing I could do about it towards the end. Even the overall winner who was trying to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Trials experienced the same phenomenon on that course. So, I ran conservatively and cruised into the finishing chute in 3:03:24.

The addictive thing about endurance sports is the drive to improve. The sane side of me says that I should be proud of my race execution, which was much smarter than my blow-up at Vineman. However, the perfectionist in me knows that I'm capable of improving by a few minutes and I'm already itching to prove it to myself. Luckily, there is a humbling and cathartic feeling in one's post-marathon legs that counteracts the ambition in his/her head and heart. That feeling can only be described by this commercial from the 2007 Flora London Marathon.

Overall, my own performance was secondary to those of many of my teammates. I am proud and amazed by the personal records and Boston qualifiers that were run by some of my friends, and I can't wait to join them on Heartbreak Hill again in 2011.

My company partners with 17 leading comparison shopping engines, and we are often asked by merchants to recommend the right engines for them.  While we can certainly make suggestions based on the products that they sell or the past results of similar retailers with whom we have worked, we like to have additional data points to help merchants set an intelligent strategy.

One source for objective and normalized traffic and demographic information about comparison shopping engines is Alexa.com.  Similar to the services provided by sites like Ranking.com and ComScore, Alexa aggregates data from users who have downloaded their proprietary toolbar.  This browser plug-in measures the popularity of hundreds of thousands of websites while dividing those results in the demographic dimensions of the Alexa user base.  Thus, if you want to know whether a website is more popular amongst members of a particular age group, gender or level of education, Alexa can provide some estimates to guide you.

I recently compiled some Alexa numbers about our 17 comparison shopping engine partners in order to help our merchants better understand the differentiation between these sites. (We are currently working on a really interesting stealth project that will provide further insight in this area. I hope to announce it in a couple of months.)   Here is what I learned:

When comparing traffic fluctuations amongst these top engines, it is no surprise that the recently-launched Bing Cashback is the fastest-growing one.  We didn’t even include it in the graph below for that reason.  Aside from Bing, the engines that are growing in popularity this year are TheFind (91.6% improvement in traffic ranking), Buzzillions (88.4% improvement), NexTag (52.8% improvement) and PriceGrabber (49.1% improvement).  There were some minor drop-offs amongst a couple of engines, but most of them maintained their popularity or improved thus far this year.

With regard to gender, the engines that are popular with males are buySAFE (by a wide margin), Google Base, Amazon and PriceGrabber.  The engines that are popular with females are like.com (by a wide margin), Shop.com, SortPrice, Become.com and Smarter.com.

When it comes to age, the most popular engines amongst people under 34 years old are Yahoo Shopping, Google Base, Bing Cashback, TheFind and like.com.  The most popular engines amongst shoppers whose age exceeds 55 years are Shopzilla, Pronto, Smarter.com, and Become.com.

The Alexa data also breaks down the demographics by education level and by the source of the IP address from which the user logged on to each comparison engine.  From this data, we can assume that TheFind, PriceGrabber, Shop.com and Buzzillions are much less popular amongst students than Google Base and Shopping.com.

Whether a merchant should be making any decisions based on nebulous third-party data from a source like Alexa is certainly debatable.  I always recommend that you perform your own tests to draw your own conclusions for your own business.  If you have the time to invest three figures to find out if you can earn five or six figures on an additional comparison engine, then I always think you’re better off defying the demographic data that you might see here.

Today marks the end of another blog hiatus for me. I apologize for my absence. My drop-off in posts during August coincided with my commencement of a new career role, which has entailed a lot of what Jim Collins would describe as The Flywheel Effect. The good news is that SingleFeed's marketing flywheel is gaining momentum, and we are starting to reap the fruits of that labor.

Another activity that has been keeping me busy has been Ironteam. This group is the little-known division of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program that prepares athletes to complete an Ironman-distance triathlon (2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and 26.2 miles of running). Approximately a year ago, I experienced a lot of things that led me to this organization. I was discontinuing my involvement with the Balfour Leadership Training Workshop just as I had the opportunity to visit the Huntsman Cancer Institute and attend the last birthday party of a coworker's wife who was battling Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. Her infectious strength and positive spirit made me want to get involved in finding a cure for her disease. I was also racing fairly often and one of my race club teammates was an Ironteam coach, so I asked him how I could get involved. Generally, only alumni of Team in Training programs have the opportunity to become mentors or coaches, but there was an opening for someone to help the team with their running, and I gladly accepted the position.

Our Kickoff Meeting was just two weeks ago, and I will admit that I arrived with some apprehension. As an outsider, I viewed Team in Training positively, but it also seemed a bit cultish. Everybody seemed to know each other and many of the athletes have a racing resume that is deeper than mine. However, after having a chance to meet and coach our team of dozens of inspirational people, I'm really glad I have joined Ironteam. Amongst the group are dozens of people who have lost siblings, parents, friends and spouses to cancer. While some of the team is made up of endurance racing veterans, we have members who will bravely make an Ironman triathlon their first foray into this sport. To put that into perspective, these inspirational people are devoting hundreds of hours of time and energy in order to make a personal contribution of thousands of dollars to help cure blood cancer.

I should mention that the program is working. Since its founding more than 20 years ago, Team in Training has raised almost $1 Billion for cancer research. In the 1960's, the survival rate for a young child with Leukemia was 4%. Today, as the result of research and medicine that has been developed over the years, that survival rate has become 85%. Of course, the other side of Team in Training is working as well. More than 400,000 participants have had the opportunity to train for marathons, cross-country skiing events, triathlons, cycling centuries and hikes. So, I certainly feel fortunate to be involved with this group, and I plan to blog regularly about the team's progress as our athletes prepare for Vineman, Ironman Louisville or Ironman Canada next July/August. Right now, it's time to squeeze in a run before I meet them for their run later this morning.

A couple of days ago, I had the chance to participate in a relay much different from the one I blogged about in May. I don't remember how the idea dawned on us, but a friend and I decided we would put together a three-person team to do the Vineman 140.6 Mile Relay. (Vineman is not an official World Triathlon Corporation event, so the term "Ironman" isn't supposed to be used in conjunction with it. Still, it is certainly a well-measured and legal Ironman-distance 140.6 mile course consisting of 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling and 26.2 miles of running.) Since my friend is a strong cyclist and his coworker is a great swimmer, I was recruited for the anchor leg of the relay: the marathon.

This was my sixth marathon, and those of you who are endurance sports enthusiasts understand that racing can be as rigorous mentally as it is physically. The dichotomy between the physical bravado of the sport and the mental restraint necessary for endurance can cause an arrogant athlete to develop a slow, sloped learning curve. Such was the case for me this time.  Our team still took the first place prize at Vineman, but it was despite my performance.

There are three types of marathoners: the completers, the "competers" and the elites. Each of them has a distinctly different racing strategy. The completers simply want to finish the 26.2 miles without quitting (or dying), so they are able to begin at a pace slower than their long training runs with the hopes of being able to hang on during the final miles. The elites generally know exactly what their bodies are capable of, so they are mostly concerned with the surges and lulls of the lead pack as they race. It is the middle-of-the-road "competers" who encounter the mysterious paradox between maximizing one's potential and fizzling out too soon before the finish line.

The common analogy that I have heard is that endurance racing is like slowly letting air out of a balloon. You have to let the air out at a pace that allows you to have some left at the end of the race. If you let the air out too quickly, you'll be deflated too soon and you'll have nothing left in the crucial final miles. Unfortunately, the guaging of the pace of deflation involves more art than science. Whether you start out slowly or quickly, those final miles are going to hurt. With prolonged effort comes increased heartrate, accumulation of lactic acid, lack of glycogen, prohibitive muscle tears, cramps and fatigue. So, even that slow pace will be harder to maintain after a couple of hours of running. On the flip side, how will you ever set a new personal record if you don't try to run faster when you feel good?

The guesswork is largely dependent upon one's training. I went into Vineman feeling as well trained as I did before Boston (but not as well trained as I was before my personal record marathon last Fall). Thus, I decided to go out at my personal record pace for as long as I could before the natural slowing would occur in the latter miles. While my plan worked well for 18 miles (two hours often seems to be the magic "wall" for many marathoners), the debilitating pain set in sooner than expected and I ended up with an overall time 10-15 minutes slower than expected. Was that something that I could have gauged beforehand? Had I added twenty seconds per mile to my pace in the early miles, would that have translated into a faster final 10K? It's really difficult to know the answer to those questions, although it's not for lack of mulling over it during the past few days.

The philosophy that is taught by the Endurance Nation program used to coach Ironman athletes seems the most logical. Make yourself go "stupid slow" for the first six miles and then count how many people you pass between the 18-mile marker and the 26.2 mile finish line. The simple truth is that it's hard for most people to walk faster than 14 minutes per mile, so if you do anything in your early miles to reduce yourself to walking thereafter, you have essentially shot yourself in the foot. Even if you add 30 seconds per mile to each of your first six miles (a total of three minutes), you'll gain back much more than three minutes for every mile you don't have to walk later on.

The good thing about sports that have a mental component is that the lessons can compound over time. I might reach a plateau in physical capability soon, but maybe I'll still hit some personal records by racing smarter with some stupid miles.

As a quick follow up to my previous post about the evolution of credibility in news media, I think today's release from Time Magazine is fitting. Many news sources are buzzing about a recent Time poll of 9,400 Time.com visitors asking, in the wake of Walter Cronkite's death, "who is America's most trusted broadcaster?" The top four answers in the survey were Katie Couric (CBS), Charlie Gibson (ABC), Brian Williams (NBC) and Jon Stewart (Comedy Central).

So, what was the most prevalent answer? With 44% of the vote (a full 15% ahead of the second place anchor), Comedy Central's Jon Stewart was the favorite amongst Time.com visitors. A closer look at the state-by-state breakdown shows that there is no chasm between red states and blue states in the results. Whether you live in Alabama, Texas or California, your neighbors trust Jon Stewart the most. They prefer satire and they are skeptical about information from any source that is presented as fact. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I find this trend to be very reflective of my generation (and we're the sons and daughters of the people who read Time Magazine).

I should mention that Brian Williams' second place finish in the poll put him a solid 10% ahead of Charlie Gibson (with Katie Couric trailing in fourth place with less than one-sixth of Jon Stewart's votes), and Williams is a clear favorite in states like Indiana, Vermont, North Dakota and Wyoming (a couple of which are Republican strongholds).

Overall, the notion of drawing perspectives from a variety of sources that I mentioned in my post earlier this week tends to be true for Stewart's Daily Show. During the first 15 minutes of the program, you'll find clips and commentary from many news agencies (albeit some of them brazenly fictional) mixed in with a blend of fact and hyperbole. Sure, there are some people who don't understand satire (a portion of which actually believe that Stephen Colbert is a staunch conservative), but for those Americans with a funny bone, maybe Jon Stewart is the Walter Cronkite of the future that I mistakenly overlooked.

The recent passing of Walter Cronkite has caused many of us to ponder the meaning and evolution of the word "credibility." As people offer their impressions of "the most trusted man in America," they seem to long for the days when they could take Cronkite's word as the gospel, and they didn't need to temper it with varying perspectives or sources.

Was the CBS Evening News actually any more credible than any other medium? Or has our nation simply become less trusting as they have become more sophisticated? Perhaps we are like the child who finally learns the truth about Santa Claus and therefore second guesses every other factual or fictional tale.

Many people contend that political slanting and less diligent fact checking have led our news to become sensationalistic. They might believe that even Walter Cronkite would have trouble earning our trust in our contemporary news environment. I agree and disagree. I believe that our age of increased communication has simply brought new light to the same age-old trend. Are our leaders more corrupt than they once were, or do we just know more about them because of the growth in media? Are our celebrities wilder than their predecessors, or are our diminishing opinions the result of more aggressive paparazzi? Do our news agencies inject more opinion than they once did, or are we just more aware of it because we can now easily compare fifty versions of the same story?

Do I think anyone can once again hold the title of "most trusted person in America?" No, I don't. Even in the technology world, we can no longer read a whitepaper by an industry analyst without first thinking about how the author is paid. In this day and age, we have to invest the time to read various conflicting angles on the same topic to determine our own opinion. Then, we have to recognize that our hard-earned notion is still just the opinion of one person. Someone else might read the same assortment of articles while reaching a completely different conclusion. Whether you are researching health care reform, vendor evaluations, or your best option for local Italian food, there are so many opinions and vantage points to sort through that none of them can be heralded as the "most trusted source." In fact, I think the most credible sources of information these days are review sites and services (such as comparison shopping engines, TripAdvisor, etc), but stories like this one about Yelp make you wonder if anything can be trusted anymore.

Overall, I find myself becoming much less interested in following snippets from one particular news source and much more interested in finding a compelling story and gathering various perspectives on it. Ask me about the "Octomom" and I couldn't care less (I didn't even know her name until I went to copy that Wikipedia link). Want to know my take on Paula Abdul parting ways with American Idol? You won't hear it...I'm not even sure that's newsworthy. However, if you ask me about prospective justice Sonia Sotomayor, I also can't comment because I am still gathering various viewpoints in order to formulate a solid opinion.

Maybe the difference between the days of Walter Cronkite and our current age of information influx has to do with the selection process. Decades ago, the news agencies decided what was newsworthy and what was filtered away from our eyes, ears and water coolers. Today, we have access to almost everything that transpires across the world, and it's our job to do the filtering.

As a person who has spent the past six years of his career working with online marketers, especially on their e-communications programs, it made sense for me to dip my toe into the social media waters a few years ago. Since then, I have evaluated MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo and Facebook and only the latter one has created an enjoyable experience for me.

• I didn't like MySpace's user interface and I was at an age where most of my peers weren't really on there anyway. I haven't touched that profile in years.
• LinkedIn is a decent way of managing my resume and career contacts, but the people in my professional life who I really interact with are on Facebook as well. I'd rather talk to them there...it's more personal.
• I have blogged about Facebook before. I think it's the perfect friendship management solution. I'm don't think it's a social networking site, because I'm not really interested in proactively recruiting new contacts on there. However, for keeping up with the friends, family members and coworkers that I already have, it's unparalleled.

So, that leaves Twitter. You can surmise by the title of this post that I'm not a fan of it. I gave it a fair chance and I'll continue to keep it in my online marketing repertoire so I'm up to date as it evolves. Yet, I feel like Twitter offers a less appealing subset of what Facebook offers. Should there really be a rivalry between Twitter and Facebook? That's a fair question since most people think they serve two different purposes. I think those people are wrong...everything that Twitter offers is a part of Facebook. (Yes, Twitter-lovers, I know you disagree but I'll be happy to show you those features on Facebook if you'd like a tutorial.) Plus, Twitter isn't picking up as much steam as everyone thinks. There was the article in April that explained that 60% of new Twitter registrants stop using the service within 30 days. Then, a couple of weeks ago a study by Nielson Online showed that during April of 2009, 13.9 billion minutes were logged by more than 200 million users on Facebook (the Internet's #4 most popular site, with more than 100 million people logging in regularly) while only 300 million minutes were logged by Twitter's user base of less than 10 million. Another interesting study by the Harvard Business School found a stark 80-20 (or actually 90-10) rule showing more than 90% of tweets were generated by the most prolific 10% of their membership.

So, there is no question that Facebook is absolutely obliterating Twitter in usage. The question is, what is Twitter lacking? I think it has three major deficiencies:

1. The notion of gaining a follower without confirmation is creepy and disingenuous. When I first signed up, a few friends started following me. When I started tweeting, I suddenly attracted a barrage of people trying to promote their own businesses. Memo to you guys: if everybody follows each other for the sole purpose of pushing each other up the rankings, the bell curve will rear its ugly head and your comparative popularity will remain constant. All you are doing is allowing spam to permeate yet another communication channel. Yes, I called you a spammer and I'll stand by that statement ; )
2. Twitter's user interface doesn't lend itself to the personal interaction that Facebook offers. Pictures, color (in the figurative sense and the literal sense) about someone's life, communities and interests bring our Facebook friends to life. Twitter is a cold world of acquaintances, most of which wouldn't bat an eyelash if you stopped following them (or passed away, same thing in their eyes).
3. Twitter's lack of critical mass makes it a less fruitful pursuit. The "gas station" philosophy of marketing comes to mind. Where do you want your gas station to be located? On the corner were the other stations are...you'll draw more business. Where should you look for loyal subscribers? Given the choice, I'd rather set up a fan page on Facebook than a Twitter account. With twenty times the active users, it seems like a no-brainer.

I, of course, am not saying that Twitter is devoid of value. Certainly, if you are tweeting on behalf of a corporation or a news agency, I think you are partaking in a higher value (free things usually have a high ROI), more interactive and more personal alternative to email newsletters. If you are a celebrity, your ability to circumvent the filter of the media by using Twitter is priceless. If you are a creepy spammer, Twitter is also a better alternative for you because you can hide behind the veil of anonymity. I'm just saying that I find Facebook to be a much better pursuit for online marketers, and I hope that Twitter's eventual investors and suitors recognize its comparatively low value.

Will I keep tweeting?  Sure, I'll keep feeding my Facebook status through Twitter to experiment with it.  However, through this post I'm going to mark myself down on the record as a reluctant member who dislikes the service.  Now, feel free to follow me  ; )

On Sunday, I reluctantly returned from the Horizons leadership program for college sophomores at which I was facilitating. Coming back down the mountain from Snowbird was a difficult journey for all of us; there is a certain type of utopia that can be created in a pure environment like that. However, as one undergraduate put it: "Sometimes we have to go to the top of the mountain to derive the perspective we need when we return to its base." I thought that analogy was especially fitting for this particular experience.

On the mountain, we taught each attendee the differences between effective/situational leadership and enduring values-based leadership. Then, we helped them identify their own core values and we challenged those values through experiential and interactive exercises. Of course, in order to be a great leader, one must truly understand and embrace the differences between diverse people. Thus, we spent a lot of time delving into each person's fundamental biases and perspectives when it comes to social style, values and personality. Lastly, each man established a two-year vision in accordance with his values as well as some goals, actions, development areas and mentors that will help him move in that direction. As facilitators, we get to spend the next two years mentoring the attendees as they achieve their goals.

The top of the mountain is the perfect place to find enough solace for the introspection it takes to uncover one's own latent values, vision, goals and plans. (I'll be honest...it was also a great place for a snowball fight.)  It's amazing how much we miss while amidst the daily grind of our sea level lives. The perspective that we gain by stepping away from a moment to evaluate is priceless. As Socrates stated: "The unexamined life is not worth living." How often do we take the time to analyze the trajectory of our lives?

I'm really looking forward to the next two years of partaking in the examination and coaching of eight exceptional lives. Alex, Ben, Casey, CJ, David, Glenn, Kevin and Pat are each rock stars in their own right, and I have grown to admire their individual talents, temperaments and convictions. Of course, mentorship is a reciprocal interaction and there is a lot of inspiration and perspective that can be gained from each mentee, regardless of his age. It is for that reason that we all were willing to return from the mountain; for the excitement of employing our newfound perspective and accountability network in our daily lives.

On Monday, I had the opportunity to make my second visit to the Huntsman Cancer Institute and Treatment Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Off the bat, the name of the facility might make it sound like a solemn-feeling hospital. While there are certainly some stark reminders of the fragility of life, a visit to this center is truly an uplifting experience.

Jon Huntsman, Sr. is a self-made billionaire who overcame an impoverished Idaho upbringing to become the Founder and CEO of Huntsman Chemical Corporation. Instead of stockpiling wealth, he became one of the world's top three philanthropists, providing aid to many nations over the years. After losing his mother to cancer and battling the disease himself, he decided to invest in research and treatment to eventually find a cure. His first order of business was to create a learning center where patients would be able to study the affliction to better understand its innerworkings. He then decided to link up with the world's largest human genome database (with roughly 10,000,000 records) to find hereditary trends and markers that might be able to predict risk factors. The center was also one of the first to open up their research progress to the world (instead of trying to compete for a cure that could eventually be a windfall). This stance of cooperation over competition was unique at the time. Finally, he built a state-of-the-art treatment center with breathtaking quality. He and his good friend Bill Marriott made a pact which shows their confidence in the facility. They decided that when (not if) they find cures for various cancers, they will transform the hospital into a luxury hotel. It won't be difficult to do, the building is already exceptional, complete with gorgeous courtyards, great craftsmanship and some of the best views of Salt Lake City that you can find.

The college students that I am mentoring this week really enjoyed the visit to Huntsman. Jon is an alumnus of the same organization to which they belong, as is his son (Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Jr.). More importantly, his philosophy of cooperation over competition is one of the major themes of their leadership program this week. Yesterday, we were discussing the drawbacks of the American mentality surrounding competition. We often walk into situtations with the assumption that we much be fierce competitors with others in order to reach our personal goals. In reality, there is usually enough differentitation of needs and plenty of resources, and cooperating with one another to ensure that everyone gets what he/she needs is the better strategy. Of course, merit-based rewards are still important, but to ignore the needs of our fellow man is to concurrently ignore the opportunity to become a great leader.

For me, the timing of my two visits to the Huntsman Institute were interesting. The first one was a month after I learned that the wife of one of the members of my sales team had been diagnosed with a particularly difficult form of Leukemia. During the ensuing 15 months of her life, I learned a lot about how families deal with these types of diseases. My coworker became one of my personal heroes in the way that he served his family during and after his wife's time on this Earth. My wife and I flew out to visit them for her last birthday and it was a lesson in marriage that can't be obtained any other way. Thus, this second trip to the Huntsman Institute brought that experience full circle.

Cancer is still one of the top two leading causes of death in the United States. I'd encourage you to take a closer look at the Huntsman Cancer Institute online. If you feel compelled to support their cause directly, you can do so at this link.